Sunday, August 11, 2013

On Latin


                                                              Image from www.angelusonline.org

I was talking to my ninang the other day, and I expressed my amazement at the few Latin songs that are being sung in masses today (well, I mean, in the usual Filipino masses, where the go-to fare is contemporary worship music). Don’t get me wrong. I LOVE Bukas Palad and Hillsong, and right now my favorite worship song is the very contemporary “I Love the Lord.” But mass songs sung in Latin are something else entirely. As my ninang put it, “They remind you that you’re part of something very old.”

Besides, everything sounds cooler in Latin! Instead of saying ‘the best among the rest,’ why not say “primus inter pares?” Instead of “Bayan, muling magtipon, awitan ang Panginoon,” the choir sang a while ago: “Laudate omnes gentes, laudate Dominum.” See what I mean?

Our own book club motto just HAD to be Latin-ized into: “Ad libris et ad vita.” (Of books and of life)

Latin is so beautiful. Almost as beautiful as Filipino. And truly, nothing draws people to God more than beauty, in any form.

The beauty found in a ray of light illuminating a stained glass window, shining on the face of a ten year old girl as she is about to receive Panis Angelicus for the first time.

The beauty of a choir singing as a church choir ought; with perfect blending… the soprano floating lightly as a dove above the profound, secure notes of the bass, the alto sweetly supporting, the tenor earnestly sighing. Never overpowering the congregation, but gently encouraging them to come and worship God through song, for as Augustine said: “Singing is prayer heard twice.”

In the book I’m currently reading, Karen Armstrong writes about certain faiths that put great value on the spoken word, on sound, on music. Irrelevant of its meaning, sound itself, like the transcendent “om,” is believed to contain the essence of life, creation itself. Xunzi, a Chinese philosopher, said: “Through the performance of music the will is made pure, and through the practice of rites the conduct is brought to perfection.”

And I think this is why it is good to hear mass, if only once a week. This highly stylized ritual between priest and congregation has less devotees in more recent times. But I’d like to argue FOR it. Even if you take away the religious aspect, just the fact that you are in a quiet and calm environment with hundreds of your fellow human beings puts you in a meditative mood that takes one away from our tendency to obsess with ourselves, our petty problems, our selfish sensibilities. We become more than what we think we are, we become part of something greater.

But of course, when you consider the religious part of the equation, then what was merely a psychological easing of the mind becomes a transcendent experience, charged with life-giving meaning, when the crowd around you becomes your brothers and sisters in Him whose presence permeates your being in the mystical sacrament of Holy Communion. More than merely an hour’s recess from labor, it becomes a brief but powerful reminder that the “drudgery” of life is nothing less than our individual contribution to spreading His Kingdom on earth. Wherever we love, wherever we show compassion, He is there. And as our basketball team pummels it out with the Persians in the MOA Arena, He is there.


P.S. Lord, Team Gilas ka, diba?

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